A 21-year-old from Virginia plead
guilty on Friday to writing and selling custom spyware designed to monitor a
victim’s keystrokes.

Zachary Shames, from Great Falls,
Virginia, wrote a keylogger, malware designed to record every keystroke on a
computer, and sold it to more than 3,000 people who infected more than 16,000
victims with it, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Here’s How Much Wells Fargo’s Fake Accounts Scandal Is
Hurting the Bank

The first real indications of how Wells Fargo's phony accounts scandal is impacting its
business are in, and they aren't pretty.

Wells Fargo reported financial results
Friday from the fourth quarter of 2016, the first complete period since the
bank's employees were caught opening millions of fake accounts for unwitting customers. After eliminating aggressive sales quotas that
were blamed for the fraudulent behavior, Wells Fargo is now struggling to attract
new business and grow revenue. The bank
said it plans to close at least 400 branches by the end of 2018—a departure
from the past several years in which it rapidly opened new locations even as
other banks shuttered their own.

There were
signs that the sham account scandal had scared potential customers away
from Wells Fargo, according to metrics the company reported along with its
financial earnings.

…For the first
time, Wells Fargo also put specific figures on how much the fallout from the
fake accounts fiasco is costing it in legal fees and other expenses. The bank expects to spend an additional $40
million to $50 million per quarter this year on lawyers as well as on other
third parties it is commissioning—in some cases at the mandate of government
regulators—to conduct independent reviews of its sales practices.

European carmakers were drawn into a widening probe of
diesel emissions testing on Friday, with French prosecutors examining Renault and
British authorities seeking answers from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

…Shares in
Renault fell more than 4 percent to their lowest level in around a month after
a source at the Paris prosecutor's office said it had launched a judicial
investigation into possible cheating on exhaust emissions at the French
carmaker.

Another example of ‘disintermediation’ for my Data
Management students.

Cellphones have lifted hundreds of thousands of Kenyans out
of poverty

In Kenya, a so-called “mobile money” system allows those
without access to conventional bank accounts to deposit, withdraw, and transfer
cash using nothing more than a text message.

It turns out that using cell phones to manage
money is doing more than just making life more convenient for the Kenyans who
no longer have to carry paper notes. It’s
also helping pull large numbers of them out of poverty.

That’s the central finding of a new study published in Science
Thursday, which estimated that access to M-PESA, the country’s most popular
mobile money system, lifted hundreds of thousands of Kenyans above the poverty
line.

Walmart is beginning the next stage of its plan to
overhaul its ecommerce operations, as online chief Marc Lore sets about
integrating key elements of its internet business with Jet.com to further reduce
prices and compete better against Amazon.

Mr Lore was made head of online operations at the world’s
largest retailer when it bought Jet.com last September for $3.3bn.

…A key motivation
behind Walmart’s Jet.com acquisition was to secure the online expertise of Mr
Lore and his executives that it was lacking internally.

…Walmart is also
working towards using Jet.com’s proprietary system of “basket economics”, whose
technology automatically changes the final cost of a customer’s online
purchases based on the type of payment used, number of items bought and where
those items are being distributed from.

App.net, the social network that promised to beat Twitter
at its own game, is shutting down. App.net
will cease to exist on March 15th, 2017. However, the code at the heart of the site
will be open-sourced, enabling someone else to take on the challenge of
battling Twitter. Maybe.

We’re launching a regular series tracking President-elect
Donald Trump’s adherence, or lack thereof, to democratic norms. These norms are not necessarily legally
required, but help make up the fabric that holds together broader democratic
values, such as accountability and the rule of law. Our aim is to provide a digestible breakdown
of when and how Trump administration policy and actions diverge from
custom, practice, and precedent in politics and law.

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.